The Carrowmore Monuments

About two miles from Sligo at Carrowmore there are two big straight thin stones about seven feet in height, and there is another Stone lying on top of them. It is said there was strange writing on it. It was put over an old chieftain, buried there in the time of Queen Maeve of Connaught, who was killed there fighting for Ireland. When it is hit by anyone it makes peculiar sounds. The hillside around is honeycombed with tunnels and caves.

Reverend William Henry, 1739.

The monuments found at Carrowmore in County Sligo are an early form of passage-grave, which were imported into Ireland by around 4,000 BC, by a tribe of colonizing cattle farmers, who most likely came here from Brittany. Modern genetic research has demonstrated that these early farmers originated in ancient Anatolia, and had migrated west through the Mediterranean bringing both domesticated animals and crops with them.

The Carrowmore passage-graves are open air constructions where a ring of stone surrounds a raised platform or tertre. The raised area supports a central burial chamber constructed of glacial erratics which is usually connected to the boundry circle by a symbolic passage-way.

Modern researchers and archaeologists believe the Carrowmore monuments to have been built by a colony of very early farmers who arrived in Ireland, most likely from the Carnac region in west France, arriving here by about 4,150 BC, when the causewayed enclosure at Magheraboy was constructed a short distance to the east of Carrowmore. These farmers brought a new kind of burial practice to Ireland: cremations, but where the human remains were placed in a communal burial chamber constructed at the centre of the ring of stones.

The Irish hunter-gatherers already practiced cremation, but from what we can tell, placed a single body in a pit in the ground, sometimes with artifacts such as an axe head or piece of jewellery. The new form of burial was communal and involved raising the reusable chamber above the surrounding ground level.

Construction materials

The stones that were used to construct the Carrowmore monuments are a very hard form of glacial erratic called gneiss, which originated in the nearby Ox Mountains where several more neolithic monuments still mark an ancient tribal boundary. The stones were already present in Carrowmore when the neolithic farmers arrived - glacial debris littering the landscape. The newcomers may have chosen this location for several reasons, but a large attraction was the availability of materials.

A local tradition—which is also found in Loughcrew—recounts how the monuments were built by a Cailleach named Garavogue who had a house high up on the Ballygawley mountains. She gathered the rocks in her white apron and cast them across the landscape to form the Carrowmore circles. In the 1880's these monuments were known as the Hag's Beds.

An Exact Circle of about thirty feet in Diameter is described. This is set about with large Flat Stones, each Stone about three or four feet high, standing on their end sunk in the Ground. It takes about fifty of these Stones to form this Circle. In the Centre of this large Circle are Erected in the Form of a Coffin, other Stones of the same kind, and standing up in the same manner, but somewhat larger. Four of these Stones generally forming each side of the Coffin—for so I will call it—and one on each End. The Space within is the Grave. On the Top of these Ten Stones standing on their Edge, is erected a Tombstone, a Monsterous Rock, the underside of which is flat, and Rest on the upper Edges of the Stones which form the Coffin.

It is Difficult to imagine how these Ancient Rude People, who knew not the Powers of Levers, could raise and fix, so exactly, such Huge Rocks, many of which weigh above twenty Tons. It probably was done by raising a Slope of Earth about the Coffin, to mount the Tombstone Rock by, which Earth, after its being fixed, was carried away. Of this kind of Monument there are a great many—I believe one hundred—in the large Field of Carrowmore which is a Mile to the South West of Sligoe Town on the Road to Clover Hill.

Reverend William Henry, 1739

There are an average of thirty to thirty-five stones in each remaining circle, the boulders set side by side in a continious ring. Some of the stones are placed on a stone packing, the function of which was to keep the tops of the stones level. The average diameter of a Carrowmore circle is ten to twelve meters, though a few such as Circles 19, 22, 27 and 51 are larger.

The Kissing Stone is the best example of a complete monument remaining today remaining in Carrowmore today. The monument is on private land and public access to this fine monument is not currently permitted. Carrowmore 7 consists of a complete circle of boulders about eleven meters in diameter, surrounding a platform which suppurts a beautifully graceful dolmen, or floating stone table. The sockets of missing stones were found during the excavations, which show that there was once a short passage leading into the chamber.

Art and Astronomy

According to official sources, only one monument at Carrowmore has an astronomical alignment. Frank Prendergast lists Circle 7, the monument known as the Kissing Stone, as being aligned to the sunrises on the spring and autumn equinoxes. In reality, every monument at Carrowmore has an inbuilt astronomical function as each monument interacts with the sun and moon on their travels around the landscape. The early passage-graves at Carrowmore function as free-standing sundials rather than precisely aligned later chambers like Cairn T in Loughcrew or Newgrange in the Boyne Valley.

While the Carrowmore monuments could function as sundials by casting shadows, the passages remaining today seem to point to odd locations. Recent research indicates that the Carrowmore monuments are concerned with the movements of the moon, in particular the rising and setting positions during the major and minor lunar extremes. The monument with the most obvious astronomical potential is Listoghil, the largest and most impressive dolmen, and the only Carrowmore monument to be covered by a cairn. However, the contraversial re-imagining and raising the height of the cairn, and the addition of a modern 'passage' which is actually an excavation trench, have rendered observations here quite difficult.

Listoghil - the Central Monument

The largest monument at Carrowmore is the great chamber at Listoghil which was constructed around 5,600 BC. The chamber is supported by a massive circulat platform or tertre, 50 meters in diameter which, according to the chief excavator Göran Burenhult may have been constructed as early as 4,000 BC. This large platform had a remarkable view of the surrounding horizon, and it is interesting to note that both cairns on Carns Hill to the east and Queen Maeve's cairn to the west are also constructed on massive platforms. It is fascinating to note that Queen Maeve's cairn and Carns Hill West are virtually equidistant from the chamber of Listoghil: if Listoghil was a mere 150 meters further east of it current location, the monument would be exactly equidistant.

The chamber at Listoghil has the largest capstone found in Carrowmore, a massive flat slab of limestone which is believed to have been quarried in the Glen close to the court-cairn at Primrose Grange, on the south side of Knocknarea. This chamber has been dated to 3,600 BC using the skull of a man in his mid 50's who had been buried within the chamber, along with six other individuals, possibly a family group. This chamber is virtually equidistant from Carns Hill West and Queen Maeve's cairn: if the chamber had been constructed 150 meters to the east of it's current location, it would be exactly equidistant. This would seem to indicate a large degree of planning and forethought in the design, layout and construction of the Carrowmore complex.

When the great chamber at Listoghil was constructed originally it would have functioned as a sophisticated sundial, sitting within concentric rings of circles upon its massive platform, commanding a total panorama of the surrounding mountains. The limestone slab covering the chamber is inclined towards the mystical lake, Lough da Ge in the Ballygawley mountains. The angle of the capstone allows the capture the sunbeam on the underside of the chamber roof. The free-standing triangular blocking stone in the doorway casts a dramatic shadow like a witch's hat. A piece of engraved neolithic art on the edge of the stone seems to illustrate the alignment and event.

Burials at Carrowmore

Although many of the Carrowmore chambers were emptied by Roger Walker, almost every reference to a monument being opened or excavated speaks of vast amounts of cremated or calcinated human remains. Circle 3 had more than 33 kilograms of cremated bone which is believed to represent at least fifty people.

The remains of burials in Tomb No. 51 are unburned human bones. A piece of a skull, showing clear cut-marks probably resulting from defleshing, has been dated to the tomb's original period of use. As the common burial practice at Carrowmore is cremation, this highlights the fact that inhumation and cremation were both practiced at the same time within the Carrowmore tradition. From a social and ritual, and maybe also ethnic, point of view, this is an important contextual fact.

Within the much larger chamber at Listoghil, a different form of burial ritual was taking place. The remains of some seven individuals were excavated—or thrown out of the chamber by Roger Walker—where they were discovered during the Swedish excavations in the late 1990's. These skeletons, believed to represent two children, three women and two men, were disarticulated and some of the males had been de-fleshed. Fragments of the skull of the oldest man, who died in his mid fifties, was used to date the monument to around 3,550 BC, interestingly enough, a date which corresponds to a total solar eclipse above Carrowmore.

A Great Wheel

Though the circles at Carrowmore are quite ruined, fourteen of the monuments have the remains of passages. A few of these symbolic entrances point back to Listoghil at the heart of Carrowmore, but several point to other monuments or indeed to sites on the summits of the surrounding mountains.

However, Carrowmore ultimately seems to be a model of an older monument or sacred place, such as Kercado in Brittany or possibly some much more ancient and remote place in Anatolia. Carrowmore was arranged like a great wheel with some forty stone circles or passage-graves constructed around the edges of the plateau, with one large monument representing the chamber close to the heart of the complex. Carrowmore may well be a model of a passage-grave like the Kissing Stone, where the boulder circle represents the ring of monuments, the plateau represents the platform or tertre, and the large central monument at Listoghil represents the burial chamber.

Some of the larger boulders appear to have been split in half, a feature that can be seen clearly in the chamber of Circle 27. The gneiss boulders at Carrowmore are rich with veins of quartz. These large erratic boulders were carried to Carrowmore by retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age. Several fields close to Carrowmore are covered by scatters of gneiss boulders lying where they were dropped by the galciers, and more can be seen from the path up Knocknarea on the left (west) side, and gives an impression of what Carrowmore looked like before the circles were built.

The Cuil Iorra peninsula where Carrowmore is located is limestone covered with a mantle of glacial gravel. The complex is located on a plateau at the centre of the peninsula, with the circles built around the edge. Some limestone slabs were used in the monuments, but not many compared to the gneiss boulders. A good example if the massive capstone on the chamber at Listoghil, which is believed to have been quarried at the Glen, the magical fault-line which opened on the south slope of Knocknarea at the end of the last ice age. Some loose limestone slabs may have been used as roofing for the passages (again there is a good example at Site 27).

Quartz at Carrowmore

Fragments of quartz were found in most of the circles, and these would have come from the Ox Mountains to the south, specifically from the area around Croughan. Most of Wood-Martin's excavation reports mention fragments or chunks of quartz.

One small piece of clear rock crystal, discovered in Circle 3, had a hole drilled through the end and was used as a pendant. Reverend Henry mentions abundant rock crystals around Knocknarea and Queen Maeve's cairn in his 1739 account of Carrowmore. Quartz was also found in the ditches of the causewayed enclosure at Magheraboy close-by. Here some thirty chunks of quartz were buried in a ring around a deposited axe head, almost as if they were intended to represent a model of a Carrowmore monument.

There is no evidence of cairns or mounds ever having covered the chambers of the Carrowmore monuments, with the exception of Listoghil. The satellite monuments were all free-standing, constructed on a raised platform or tertres which can be up to a meter above the surrounding ground level.